There’s a lot that factors into what makes a physician job a good one, but salary is always a big factor in whether a job ultimately ends up being a good fit. Doctors having access to salary data empowers physicians to get their worth in the job marketplace. This article is aimed at providing anesthesiologists with salary transparency about what the average salary is in anesthesia (and information about other parts of the compensation package), so that they can leverage this data during your contract negotiations.
In our physician communities, we see so many physicians express that they’ve been undervalued during their job search process. As part of our mission to empower physicians, we try to provide concrete data points about physician salaries and compensation packages in our physician salary and negotiation databases, as well as use this blog series to compile aggregate data on what doctors make, and make it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases.
Reported averages on physician salaries depend on several factors. Given the wide range of compensation across specialties, specialty is of course one of the largest factors in answering the question of how much doctors make. This series on compensation data by specialty assesses aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
Other factors such as hours worked, location, and practice environment all play a large role as well, so we look at differences in some of these categories within the specialty as well. Unless otherwise noted, the data included in our analysis below was collected from mid-2023 through mid-2024.
Last updated: June 2024, to update salary averages with new data received. Thank you to our PSG members!
Disclaimers/Disclosures: This information is derived from our physician salary and compensation databases, but is subject to self-reporting errors and availability of relevant data points from our online communities. This information is provided for educational purposes only, and is aimed at advocating for individual physicians. It is not intended to be used for collective bargaining; please see additional disclosures and disclaimers on the physician salary data pages. Please also do your own research before making any decisions based on the information provided. We are not formal financial, legal, or tax professionals and do not provide individualized advice. You should consult these as appropriate. We highly recommend having your physician employment agreement reviewed by a physician contract review attorney to ensure you have the most up to date and relevant information for your specific situation.
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How Much Does an Anesthesiologist Make in 2024?
The average annual 2024 salary across all of our contributing anesthesiology members was $491,000, including physicians practicing part time and full time. This is data for attending physicians only, excluding residents and fellows.
A single average annual salary can be misleading, as several factors affect salary. We break this number down further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Anesthesiologist Salary
Part-time salaries can skew the overall average, so let’s look at full-time versus part-time separately.
For a full-time equivalent, we assumed an average number of hours worked a week of 36 hours or more.
The average salary for full-time anesthesiology doctors in 2024 was $515,000. To give you an idea on the range of the salary around the average, a few extra stats:
The highest were in the $1,000,000 a year range.
The lowest were around $200,000.
The median salary was $500,000.
Average Part-Time Anesthesiologist Salary
To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending physicians who reported working 16-35 hours a week. We don’t have enough data points to break this down further, so please consider contributing if you haven’t already for future updates to this page. Find links to contribute on our physician salary and compensation data page.
The average part-time anesthesiologist salary in 2024 was $301,000.
How Much Anesthesiologists Make by Specialization
Anesthesiologists can designate a subspecialty when contributing to our databases. Looking at how much anesthesiologists make by specialization, we do so some large differences.
General anesthesiology salary: $514,000
Cardiac & cardiothoracic salary: $682,000
Pain management anesthesiology salary: $488,000
Pediatric anesthesiology salary: $527,000
Our cardiothoracic and cardiac anesthesiologists report the highest average salary, making around 40% more than our lowest paid specialty (pain management).
Dive deeper into:
If you’re in another specialty such as critical care and obstetrics and would like to see your specialty included in the future, contribute to the physician salary and compensation data so that we can add them in future updates.
Anesthesiologist Salary by Gender
We looked at reported salaries for full-time physicians who reported working 36+ hours a week and compared what our female physicians averaged compared to their male counterparts, excluding all other factors (such as specialization, location, etc.).
Female anesthesiologists reported an average salary of $491,000. Male anesthesiologists reported an average salary of $554,000.
When looking strictly at the average salaries overall amongst anesthesiologists, our male doctors averaged 13% higher than our female doctors.
Anesthesiologist Salary by Practice Environment
Looking at full-time (36+ hours a week average) attending anesthesiologists, we broke the data down by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Active duty military - not enough data points to assess
Corporate group, non private equity - not enough data
Corporate group, private equity - not enough data
FQHC and other non-profits - not enough data
Government (VA, City Hospital, Etc.) - $369,000
Group private practice, non private equity backed - $537,000
Group private practice, private equity backed - $562,000
Academic hospital employee - $475,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $547,000
Solo private practice - not enough data
Looking at data just by practice environment, anesthesiologists working for the government, such as the VA and city hospitals, reported the lowest average salaries. These positions often, however, qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which can be a significant benefit in the overall compensation package, which is one of the reasons we say to consider not just the salary but the entire proposed offer. These physicians also tended to report less hours worked weekly than other anesthesiologists in other practice environments.
While we don’t have enough data points yet to assess an average for our active duty military members, from the data we have received, we can see that they report our lowest average salaries around $200,000/year.
Our private equity backed group private practice physicians made more than our non-private equity backed, though we’ve seen the general overall trend to be the opposite. It’s hard to discern why concretely with the number of data points we have to assess, but we looked for potential reasons for the difference. We noted that we have significantly more data points for non-private equity backed versus PE practices, but of the PE backed groups, the owners/partners reported much higher (27%) salaries, likely from practice buyout agreements, that can significantly skew the data. This may account for the differential, which is not seen when comparing private equity versus non-private equity W2 employee salaries.
We’d also like to see the differences in hours worked, volume requirements, and other factors that may be driving up the compensation in the private equity backed groups. We look forward to continuing to investigate these trends as we collect more data and update the article. For now, make sure you’re comparing specifics by looking at the individual data points within our full salary and compensation data.
Our anesthesiologists working for non-academic hospitals made an average 15% more than their academic counterparts, outside of other factors and compensation components.
Anesthesiologist Salary by Type of Employment
When submitting data, our physician members indicated their type of employment. Looking at full-time attending anesthesiologists (36+ average hours a week):
1099 (single entity regular job, 1099 arrangement) - $594,000
W2 employee - $491,000 a year
Locums/per diem - not enough data*
Partner/owner - $622,000 a year
All other factors aside, partners and owners averaged 27% higher than W2 employees, showing large potential for career growth if the added responsibilities of helping manage a private practice interest you.
Our 1099 contractors reported 21% higher earnings than our W2 employees, though these doctors don’t receive many of the additional benefits the W2 employees receive, such as CME stipends, retirement match, etc. They are, however, potentially able to write off more work-related expenses.
Related PSG resources to explore:
* We have a separate locums pay and compensation data set, and have looked at the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors separately, where there is much more data about this.
Anesthesiologist Salary by Location
We also looked at how much anesthesiologists make depending on which state they live in. States with less than 10 data points were omitted from our analysis. If you don’t see your state listed and want to see where it stacks up, contribute your physician salary and compensation data today.
California - $559,000 a year
Florida - $509,000 a year
Illinois - $524,000 a year
New Jersey - $545,000 a year
New York - $576,000 a year
North Carolina - $476,000 a year
Pennsylvania - $504,000 a year
South Carolina - $538,000 a year
Texas - $500,000 a year
Washington - $442,000 a year
While city and local metropolitan areas can factor heavily into the cost of living, and how much a physician actually brings home depends on state and local taxes, assessing different salary options across the country and comparing them to the cost of living can give physicians the potential to geoarbitrage if they are willing to move. Just make sure you know what is included in cost of living comparisons (taxes are often excluded and can be significant).
Anesthesiologist Salary by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied by reported hours worked for our anesthesiologists. Some of our members reported working 61+ hours a week, but the vast majority fell into the averages below.
36-40 hours a week average - $481,000 a year
41-45 hours a week average - $499,000 a year (4% increase)
46-50 hours a week average - $516,000 a year (3% increase)
51-60 hours a week average - $548,000 a year (6% increase)
61-70 hours a week average - $595,000 a year (9% increase)
Our anesthesiology salary data shows that income does generally increase with the hours worked, though as we’ve noted with other specialties, pay does not tend to increase proportionally with additional hours. Our 41-45 hour a week anesthesiologists work around 12% more hours than our 36-40 hour a week doctors, but only report an average 4% higher income. A similar trend is found for anesthesiologists who work 46-50 hours a week versus 41-45 hours.
It may be worth assessing the opportunity cost of working more at your job versus starting a physician side gig instead, or spending more time at home with your family.
Changes in Average Anesthesiologist Salary Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting data from our most recent salary and compensation database.
We also dug into our previous salary database we started in 2018 to get an idea of the trends in average pay over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at anesthesiologists out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old data and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2019: $363,000
2020-2021: $434,000 (20% increase)
2022-2023: $465,000 (7% increase)
With our average salary for anesthesiologists of $515,000 from our new database covering mid 2023 to mid 2024, we can see salaries continuing to increase for 2024. We hope with continued salary transparency, this trend will continue.
Additional Insights into Anesthesiologist Compensation Packages
In addition to salary information, physicians contributing to our databases include other compensation data as well. We plan to dive further into complete compensation packages later, but for now, we have included some key insights anesthesiologists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Anesthesiologists Receive
35% of our anesthesiologists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $40,000.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
Around 20% reported receiving a relocation bonus. The average amount was around $10,000.
Average Vacation Days Anesthesiologists Receive
The average number and median number of vacation days annually was 35 days. Some doctors commented that their vacation is an overall pool of paid time off, including their sick days and CME, while others had separate buckets.
CME Stipends for Anesthesiologists
Around 55% of our full-time anesthesiology doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend, with the average annual stipend being around $4,200.
Average Student Loan Debt for Anesthesiologists
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our physicians who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $245,000. The higher your federal loan debt burden, the more beneficial repayment programs and loan forgiveness programs can be.
Learn more about doctor student loans. If you’ve been considering refinancing to help with the debt burden, you can also explore our student loan refinancing options.
Extra Insights from Anesthesiologists
As part of our salary and compensation data contributions, members of our physician online community can provide additional comments. As we compiled the data, we also looked for additional insights provided by other anesthesiologists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing How Much You Make as an Anesthesiologist
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in anesthesiology. But a reminder: remember to look at the overall picture, taking into consideration all the factors included above and others, such as other compensation in the overall employment package such as amount of PTO, call responsibilities, 401(k) match, etc. Salary is a key component to physician compensation, but it isn’t the only part of a well negotiated physician employment contract.
If you like where you work but don’t love the pay, consider setting aside a time to talk with management. If you are a valued part of their team, they may be willing to work with you to renegotiate your contract versus risking you leaving. Their answer may be no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Be practical in what you’re expecting and respectful in your request. Diving deeper into the salary and compensation data for physicians for comparable situations can help you get a target idea of what to try to renegotiate for.
Looking for additional career opportunities can also help. Sometimes, an employer may either not be able to or just not willing to work with you to get you to where you should be. That doesn’t mean every job will come with the same constraints. Interviewing for a few other positions can give you a feel of what the market looks like from the employer’s perspective by what employers are willing to offer. Explore open opportunities on our Physician Side Gigs job board, and explore all our physician career resources and education to help you navigate the job search process.
While we think the data above and in our database can be a great tool during the negotiation process, we almost always also recommend hiring a local contract review attorney for physicians to review your contract. They will have invaluable experience when it comes to negotiating physician contracts, including understanding what red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income as an anesthesiologist but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Sedation for pediatric dental offices
Concierge IV hydration businesses
Explore more side gigs for anesthesiologists for ways to increase your income.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Anesthesiologists
Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries:
If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page.
Looking for a new career opportunity? Explore the Physician Side Gigs job board for current opportunities.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out: